Consumer Services Evaluation

Polk County Health Services Evaluation:

LHPDC conducts an annual independent evaluation for Polk County Health Services in Des Moines, Iowa, to help improve services for individuals with disabilities in the Des Moines area. PCHS advocates for people with disabilities by helping them pursue employment and education, using an array of educational, training, and employment services.

Informed Consent Research

Informed consent is effective only if individuals are presented with the relevant, legally required information about the research study and understand that information sufficiently to make an informed decision.

Interactive Multimedia and Biorepository Informed Consent Study:

This study is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating interactivity and multimedia to efficiently enhance and standardize the informed consent process for human DNA and tissue biorepositories. We expect interactivity and multimedia to significantly improve subject knowledge and understanding and multimedia to decrease staff time devoted to obtaining consent, when compared to a standard, paper-based informed consent process (e.g., control group).

Interactive, Multimedia Informed Consent for Clinical Trials:

This pilot study hopes to identify ways to improve informed consent processes for research by incorporating instructional design strategies that use multimedia and interactivity. We hypothesize that providing information in multiple media, managing the sequence and rate of presentation of information, and making the informed consent process interactive will result in improved participant understanding.

After developing an interactive, multimedia informed consent module based on principles of human learning, perception, and memory, this project investigates the feasibility of an interactive multimedia informed consent process that can optimize learning of information presented in informed consent to meet both the spirit and the content of the legal requirements under the federal regulations.

Technical Assistance and Website Support

Southeast ADA Center Technical Assistance:

LHPDC provides technical assistance and website support for the Southeast ADA Center, who does training and guidance on the Americans with Disabilities Act, through a subcontract from the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University.